Pharmacy students on the COVID-19 frontline volunteer for helpline and pharmacies

Students of the Department of Pharmacy at the University of Malta have mobilised to address various pharmaceutical needs during the coronavirus pandemic.

A group of pharmacy and pharmaceutical technology students also contributed by volunteering at the national helpline coordinated by the Department of Public Health of the Ministry of Health.

More so, other students also helped by delivering medicines to older and vulnerable patients through the Pharmacy-of-Your-Choice (POYC) scheme.

Through this scheme, patients who are due to collect their chronic medication on the POYC national health scheme from private community pharmacies and are not able to go to the pharmacy or send a proxy, are receiving their medicines at home thanks to these students.  

Students are also volunteering to support community pharmacies which are currently front-line providers of pharmaceutical services. Such services include facilitating the maintenance of access to chronic medications, ensuring the availability of non-prescription medicines and products that are being recommended for preventive measures, namely alcohol-containing products as antiseptics. 

Another group of pharmacy students led by Doctorate in Pharmacy student, Ferdinand Ribo, coordinated the starting-up of an activity within the Pathology Department of Mater Dei Hospital, in collaboration with the Central Procurement and Supplies Unit, to prepare hand rub for healthcare facilities.

Since then the production was transferred to the Dental Technology Services, where for the past 2 weeks, the Dental Lab at Mater Dei Hospital has been and continues to be utilized for the production of alcohol hand santitizers.

At the receiving centre, used alcohol containers are disinfected and refilled on site to replenish the Procurement and Supply Stores, and re-stock hand sanitizers in-house. The procedure implemented follows the WHO recommendations in order to compensate for the depleting stock of hand sanitizers due to the COVID-19 situation.

The collaboration and teamwork between different professions within the same department, namely dental technologists and dental assistants, has provided an alternative resource to cater for all healthcare facilities. To date over 3,000 containers have been supplied by the centre.